Google Grows, Sues Actors Who Are Many Small Businesscurrencies

Google has filed a lawsuit against the con artist who disguised himself as the search technology giant.(photo: unsplash)

JAKARTA - Google has filed a lawsuit against a fraudster who disguises himself as the search technology giant and targets small businesses as victims.

The fraudster disguised himself as Google and demanded the cost of creating a Business Profile, which is a free tool Google offers where their business can appear on search results and maps with important information such as reviews, addresses, contact info and photos.

The scam includes telemarketing calls to small businesses and tries to charge them for profile verification. In fact, the fraudster also has websites selling positive and negative reviews fake to influence how businesses can appear in search and map results.

According to Google, this lawsuit is important, to discontinue bad actors because this scam disproportionately affects small businesses and individuals who do not have the power to protect themselves.

"This is key to building a legal precedent for a safer web," Google said in a statement.

This isn't the first time small business scams have occurred, in 2021, Google has also halted more than 12 million attempts by malicious actors to create fake Business Profiles and nearly eight million attempts by malicious actors to claim Business Profiles that don't belong to them.

With this lawsuit, it indicates that Google is very serious for ongoing and proactive efforts to crack down on vulnerable targets.

Launching Mashable, Wednesday, November 30, earlier this year alone, Google also took legal action against fraud that took advantage of people's loneliness during the pandemic by claiming to sell puppys.

The company also won a legal case against malware dubbed Glupteba, he stole cookies, credentials, and cryptocurrencies mined by infected users.